


Nature Boy

by WyrmDisco



Series: Post Canon Fero [3]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Background Relationships, Bittersweet Ending, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26764516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyrmDisco/pseuds/WyrmDisco
Summary: And so, a week after the Frost Shepard arrived, the world continues. There has been no reconfiguration yet. Fero Feritas, it has been two weeks since the Frost Shepard arrived. Where do we find you? What are you doing?
Relationships: Emmanuel Aracia La Salle/Fero Feritas/Lem King
Series: Post Canon Fero [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966825
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	Nature Boy

**_in spring plants sprout_ **

  
  


It was a lie.

He wakes up thinking this almost every day. The light will fade in through the vines covering the entrance to his hollow. Maybe it dances across his face, maybe he stretches out first- flexing his hands and cracking his knuckles as he does. He’ll rub his eyes- as usual. Goes straight for the water he keeps in a jug above the branch he thinks of as his kitchen counter. Lets it run over his face. Wasteful.

It was a lie.

And it was weird, too. He hates to admit it. Hates to think about it. So he convinces himself of a joke, to make the edges of the deception a little rounder. The weirdest part- he practices saying to himself in a cracked glass mirror- is that he is alone now. Who _cares_ really about, like, a secret council of his closest friends engaging in psychological warfare against his- he tongues a snaggled tooth, intentionally feeling the point of it. His home. He tells himself over and over, tasting the words in his mouth like vitriol. It wasn’t the deception, the understanding, the betrayal, or the bond he had felt with those people shattered by the unexpected impenetrability of being left out. It isn’t that they hadn’t invited him- he had heard later that week- because they thought he’d “throw things.”

_I guess if we got reconfigured, I would go home. And I would... find new friends._

He spits into a small, brass bowl. He looks at his cracked face, his eyes reflected back at him in triplet. What a fucking joke. Ha Ha. He would go home.

And here he is, anyway. Home.

A room inside a rock inside tree, furnished by his own hand. Fabrics he wove from a loom he built, wood-block patterns he designed stamped on their surfaces in bright, obtrusive colors. The orange hurt his eyes, now. The embroidery on his curtains wasn’t to his taste anymore. _I’ve gotten old._ And his back cracks when he reaches for a small, grey teacup above the counter. Hand-drawn stylized birds encircle it. Funny, that he had made it before ever becoming a panther. Funnier still that it is the one piece of art he still likes. _I liked it better when it was a cave inside a mountain instead of this... Cave inside a mountain inside a tree on this weird... This awful, weird place that won’t shut up._ And maybe a lot of things in his life were like that.

The tea he makes is simple, black. Notes of orange to brighten the morning. He oversteeps it and winces at the bitterness, takes so long to finish it that it has grown long-cold when the wet-plump leaves settle finally at the bottom. _I wonder if you could tell a fortune with this?_ But what fortune would he want to tell? What expectations could there be, for someone who could face a man filled with stars and rip them straight out of him?

And he pushes the thought aside, as he has these _something_ months. He isn’t even sure what to call them. Gueling is too depressing, tough is too rowdy. Boring? Boring feels right, if not for the hard work he has put in. There is no leisure in the mountains. He fell almost immediately into old habits. The first day, he used a pole to dig a stream closer to the garden. Now, he sits by it while lighting a small fire with a rock. He spent long days pounding the ground of the Rhizome into something he could farm, planting root vegetables and bamboo. He found a part of the cave that was wet and damp enough to cultivate fat, brown mushrooms, and they make a delicious stew when he boils them with some new, strange spices. He’s never had something spicy be _blue_ before and the idea is so novel, he thinks he has to tell-

Well.

Maybe later.

He does not stop moving all day, before the sun sets he is exhausted. And another sun will rise, soon, anyway, on this bullshit twist of a world. _I liked it better when it was flat._ He looks absently at his fingernails, ragged and broken, dirt caked deep in the bed of his nails. He can’t. He can’t dig that deep, he refuses to let go of what might be the last piece of-

He works until he cannot dream at night, too tired to notice the phases of the moon as they pass. Birds sing at night to the rising of a distant sun, he knows their voices are different from the birds that are his neighbors. He thinks he will try to find millet seed soon, so they will have more to eat. He remembers the storm, wind, rain. The sap. On his way here.

_I... I want to- I want to find- I want to have found it._

And here he was, his feet washed after a long day. When he found it, it was like a room in a hotel. Not lived in, not enough laundry on the floor. A miracle nothing had broken when his mountain was swallowed up by a tree. His skin still hot from the sun, his muscles sinking heavily into anything that will hold his weight for him after another long day. He will keep feeding the birds, he will plant more food for them to grow. Who knows how long he’ll stay this time? They’ll need something for when he leaves again.

But for now, what this is… is a relief. He can’t remember the last time he was really alone. There is a stillness to it that covers him like a blanket. The scratchiness of the fabric had made him itch in his youth, but both he and it have grown softer at the seams. A few washes is really all it takes. Some nice soap, a sprig of lavender for the fragrance. The end of the world. This is what he wanted. And he is glad, at the end of those long, well… maybe grueling was the right word sometimes, for when the ache in his bones outweighs the pride of having created something new. 

_Maybe it's in a year, but like, right now, I- This is what I want. And... I just am glad that it's fin- It's-I'm just glad that I don't have to decide if today is the day that I leave anymore. Because I did it._

**_in summer they flourish_ **

It confuses him at first-throws him for a loop- when his crops start disappearing. He knows what animals do, he made some of the animals himself. There are no telltale nibbles or paw marks. Oddly enough, it’s only the fruits that go missing- vegetables and rice left fully untouched. He asks the plants, of course, what has been making their fruits disappear. This fruit tree is new- created when he wished he had honey but realized he can no longer stand the unyielding small talk that comes with a hive of bees. The sticky-sweet center of the fruit can be heard even when the tree tries to speak- its youth making it embarrassed. The tree mumbles back to him a color, a smell, a metaphor, and a poem he can’t quite translate. 

_What am I-Which kind of… animal? Is deep brown, soapy, a cherry blossom on the last day of Spring, and. What was that about a Sky Pond?_ _Ugh._

He spends the day thinking of this, coming up with answers until all he can come up with are half-cynical jokes. 

_What’s deep brown, soapy, and a cherry blossom on the last day of Spring? A newspaper!_

It wasn’t a newspaper, he realizes, when he has spent the night outside as a cat. His double-lidded eyes blink twice when he recognizes another Halfling, a child by their size, pluck a fruit quickly and fade away into the dark. They only took one. 

It becomes a routine to watch for a few days. Fero enjoys his time as a cat, likes playing pranks on the robins next door who shriek when he snarls at them, and chirp accusations when he purrs out a laugh. It’s nice being smaller than usual, it’s nice having such fluid movement. _I should stretch more_. He rolls his arm, the stone of his shoulder as stiff as always, feeling stiffer now that the rest of him was soft. He sits in the tree, yellow eyes illuminating the darkness, and tries to learn more about the child stealing his honey-pears. Always only takes one, always so fast in doing it.

_Oh, a cherry blossom on the last day of Spring. Fleeting._

A week passes, and the child strays one night. Their feet are hesitant like they have sunk into the sap ground, sticking. They glance over their shoulders, never in the right direction, and stoop down to place something by the tree. Fero falls asleep and investigates the next morning.

It is a bowl filled with salted meats. Food for a pet. For… _The child knew I was here?_

Fero, frankly, is delighted. He sings a tune all day while he works, planning different ways to meet his new friend. He settles, as he knew he would, on an old classic. 

“HEY!” He shouts, jubilant.

The night is calm, the air still. The child starts, but is stopped when Fero morphs out of his cat form and back into a Halfling. He’s about a head taller than the child, and is pleased to find their cloak is handmade.

“What!” They shout, eyes wide.

“Hey! Nice to meet you. You’ve been stealing my apples.”

“Oh, I’m-”

“No, don’t apologize. You should eat if you’re hungry. I was just going to tell you, you know, you should. If you’re hungry, you should take more. Stock up, maybe plant your own tree, too. Only takes a year to bear fruit, pretty proud of that one.” 

Fero’s smile is wide, his his teeth uneven. His nose crinkles, his bushy eyebrows shoot up past the bangs that frame his face. His eyes are still a bit feline. The child doesn’t know what to think, except-

“You’re a halfling!”

“I am.”

“Which Rosemarrow are you from?”

He barks, “Huh?” 

“Oh, so the most recent one, then.”

“I mean,” Fero thinks hard for a moment about things he had learned- strata and lamina and worlds beneath worlds- and decides on, “I guess.”

“I’m Cerasus.”

“Fero.”

“Feritas?!”

Fero groans like it is the end of the world, again. “Yes. Feritas.”

“My mom has letters for you!” They say, giddy, “I didn’t think you were real!”

“Wait- what?”

“My mom, she’s the postmaster for this arm. Mostly it’s just the Rosemarrows that send letters to each other- always really boring bureaucratic stuff,” Fero rolls his eyes and smiles ruefully. “But yours come from somewhere else, and nobody knows who you are! Except I do, now! You have to come back with me!”

Fero closes his eyes, listens to the tree next to them wax poetic about beings with two heads. Listens to the rice complain about the water being too sweet, though the yams- blessedly- are content. He sighs.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

Cerasus, he learns, is fourteen years old and was born in the Winter. Fero doesn’t have to learn new pronouns, they and them and theirs had been correct. “I hate feeling like anything but myself.” They had said, and Fero heartily agreed. The two of them spend some early evenings together- Cerasus sharing stories about their mom, mostly, and her adventures. Fero keeps it to himself when his inventions are mentioned, liking the idea of only being known as a mysterious letter-receiver. Except that would mean he received the letters, instead of putting it off. Cerasus learned many things in the evenings they spend with their weird, old friend- how deep to plant different seeds, how to listen to a gourd to tell when it is ripe, which of the rocks can be ground into seasonings. But, for a very long time, they do not learn what the letters say. Or who the sender was. They are young and a romantic, and the question bites Fero every time he hears it.

“When will you open them?” Cerasus will ask with big, black eyes, their dark skin shining in the humidity of the Summer. 

“Soon.” Fero will say, not quite lying when _soon_ could mean anything once you were old enough.

He can no longer put it off when, one evening while cooking, one of the letters slips off his counter and into a pot of water. He scrambles, fishing it out with the quick reflexes he had always prided himself on, and gingerly opens and spreads out the papers. They are soft when damp, and his eyes are filled with fear and worry for the first time in, what? A year? Two? How long had it been?

He finds the next morning that the writing on them has not smeared, blessedly written in graphite. The neat, precise lettering is foreign to him. Whose handwriting is this?

It begins:

_Fero,_

_I know we have seldom spoken, but I felt I should let you know. He talks about you when he does not mean to. Most of the time, he does not even say your name, but you are in the huff of his breath and the slouch of his shoulders. He cannot tolerate the beach we found, and will not tell me why he stormed off as soon as his feet touched the dirt. So, now, he spends his time by the river._

_He has been paralyzingly, terribly anxious. He wakes up every morning convinced that it's going to happen today. Rather than staying in bed all day with me, he leaves to do some work in the library. He still talks with Benjamin. Sometimes, he will be gone for days having taken the gondola down to Alcyon to meet with Galenica. He tells me the god prefers to meet in a cramped bar. Can you imagine that? And he asks whether or not it's going to be today. And unremittingly and without fail, Galenica has given some cool non-answer. Every time._

_But I know, when I look at him, he is genuinely and without reservation doing what he does best. Which is reading and looking at things at the bottom of a river and- and I am glad you are reading this, Fero, because we share the same frustrations. He is also very good at annoying people and never quite deciding on what it is that he ought to be doing in that moment._

_I respect your reasons for leaving. I think, sometimes, by the riverbed where Lem and I spend our evenings, that I wish we had gone somewhere else, too. I thought you should know that he has not gotten a new violin yet._

_Emmanuel Aracia La Salle_

Fero looks at the paper for a long moment, absorbing its meaning. He thinks of a time when it would have made him angry, to think of Lem having the audacity to think of him. Now it just makes him… He takes a bite out of stale bread, focusing intently on the sting of the dry brittle pieces as they cut into his mouth. It makes him homesick.

_Emmanuel,_

He writes one week later.

_If he got a new violin, the humidity from the river would break it._

_Fero_

Cerasus is delighted to hold the response in their hands, mind working a million romantic tales into place. Fero gives the child a fond scoff and ruffles their hair. Gives them a basket of honey-pears for their mother. And the thought gives him pause, when he notices his legs are not bouncing. He hasn’t bitten his nails. He just waits, patient without petulance, for the first time in his life.

**in autumn clouds gather**

Becoming a luthier is, Fero thinks, not something he had ever considered. Sure, he’s built things before. All the component parts are useful. He doubles over in laughter to an empty field when he discovers the horse hair is not as good for strings as fulltaur hair. Nobody would believe this one, he would have to tell Emmanuel. 

The letters were consistent. Most of them were jokes. Emmanuel had written a very personal confession, which Fero had responded to with a beautifully inked painting of a donkey. Fero had been smiling wryly when he handed the letter off to Cerasus, the teenager blushing over something they had formulated in their mind. Someday, when they were older, Fero would have to ask them what fiction they had spun. For now, he played into the joke, always delighted to be weird. Cerasus had grown tall since the first letter had been opened, and is now a full inch taller than Fero. They remind him that they are nearly an adult, now- sixteen whole years old!- and that his teasing is immature. But they say it through smiles. Fero likes their mom- Amans Amplexis- and has visited the Rosemarrows. First, begrudgingly. Now, for fun.

Sometimes people are nice. Fero would never admit it.

Emmanuel’s second most recent letter had been a recipe for scones. Fero tried tirelessly, sought out help from Amans and, later, from several real bakers in the towns. They were terrible scones. The bakers had insisted on changing the recipe, which Fero staunchly denied. He felt his tongue in his mouth when he told them the recipe was very important. He tried not to think about why.

He wrote to Emmanuel a month ago,

_La Salle,_

_You are a liar and a scoundrel for wasting my time on a recipe for disaster._

_F_

And he should not have been surprised when the response came six days later.

_Fero,_

_Maybe you just need to ask a better baker._

_Emmanuel_

The back of the letter had a map painted, but the handwriting was not Emmanuel’s. Fero had learned, a year ago, that Hella was writing again. Emmanuel had mentioned, once, that Hella had begged for Fero’s location so she could write to him as well. Fero had ignored that letter, sending instead a packet of seeds. Emmanuel did not need to know that the seeds were for a plant he thought Hella, specifically, would like. But he must have understood despite Fero’s lack of communication, because a week later Emmanuel said _Hella’s_ plant had sprouted. Well, good. Adaire drew a map for Emmanuel to give to Fero.

So, like he always did when he felt anxious and complex, he did something new. 

The first guitar was just awful. The fretboard separates from the neck immediately when he tries to play it, and the seams along the side are warped. The second one was okay, playable, but he had sacrificed so much of the design for functionality that the resonance is affected. And, deciding nobody likes a shitty guitar, he kept making them. He isn’t sure how many guitars he has made, at this point, but he is happy with the one that sits on his mantle. He plays it sometimes, bold fingerpicked styles that remind him of a man he loved, once. Gentle songs he makes up for himself, about joys that aren’t found in town. The music of the wind at night and crows on the wing at dawn. He finds a bard in town to teach him how to write notations, and sends several traced-hands marked up and down with what he still thinks are esoteric symbols. 

It was the first letter he had addressed to Lem King.

Though the paper bore the telltale etchings and delicacies of a message written and rewritten, the response was simple,

_Fero,_

_I have no instrument to read this with._

_Lem_

And, well, he’d been making guitars for a while now. What’s a violin, if not a smaller and somewhat worse guitar? He laughs softly to himself when he writes this in a letter to Emmanuel, but decides with joy in his heart not to send it. No. This would be a surprise.

He stays in lots of places on his way back to the Last University. He plants some seeds where he thinks they will be helpful and not invasive. He talks with a large, intimidating flock of _something_ and pushes away any payment the rancher’s family offers him for mediating their squabble. He finds some places he’s been before- some trees he planted on his way out. They look nice, now. One of them is done up with yellow and orange ribbons, and there are children playing beneath it. An old man is sitting under the tree, telling a story. The man’s hair is white and coiled, and it makes Fero smile instead of making him heartsick.

When he finally gets there, he isn’t a halfling. He couldn’t be recognized by the man he had seen in the garden on his way in- his hair now its original black in its short crop. His arm is missing, and his clothes are well-tailored to suit his figure. He wears a ring around a cord on his neck. Fero, as a cat, had run up and jumped on his back, yowling wildly. Laughing in his heart, remembering a time when he had been a little buddy. Maybe he still was.

Ephrim had shouted, and tried to throw him. He was not fast enough, Fero leapt down and scurried away. Ephrim stood, dazed and watching, wondering why a cat was wearing a backpack. He smiled, and stooped back down to continue gardening.

On the door to their house, there was an engraved plaque that read “ _King,_ _Aracia La Salle.”_ Fero grins, remembering Emmanuel calling this his _Kingdom_. He stays for dinner. He stays that night.

In the morning, he reads a letter from Hella. 

He cries.

**_in winter it snows_ **

It goes like this: 

The first violin broke almost immediately. But bow was a work of mastery. Lem was furious when he found out about the fulltaur hair, Emmanuel had slapped Fero hard on the back during Lem’s ravings. Ultimately, he conceded. Fero visited the two of them every autumn. The bow was perfect. The violins kept getting better.

Hella cries when she sees the anteater, at first. Its face is just. It’s too much. Two noses, long and floppy like a tapir, and a large fanned-out tail. Buff arms. What the fuck. She smiled wide, her face lovingly creased with age. She should have known Fero would have something to say about her ant problem, but she didn’t think it would be like this. He had once told her he wanted her, desperately, to understand how wrong they had all been. She told him what her wife had told her, “If you know what you're doing, regret isn't a leak in the ship. It's a rudder.” He had liked that quite a lot, and began talking about how maybe, next, he’d build a boat. She said she would help him. 

Ephrim and Throndir listen to him perform, finally, years after the first performance he was brave enough to share. Ephrim critiques a word he thinks Fero has misused, Throndir tells him the melody reminds him of something old. Fero no longer considers this an insult. He’s been old, himself, for a long time now.

He wasn’t the first of them to pass, and passing was natural. Hella had been devastated when Hadrian, one hot Summer day, simply did not wake up. Rosana had held her as she cried. They had spent that night outside together- Ephrim, Throndir, Hella, Adaire, Fero, Rosana, Blue J, and Benjamin. They talked about his awkward sermons, how he eventually needed help down the stairs. How good that _one_ spoon he made had turned out. How much they loved him, and will love him still.

When Fero dies, the first person to notice is Ephrim. His gardenias are blooming larger than they ever had been, and every flower is pointed straight up. Overnight, the fruit on all his trees had ripened to fullness. Their fragrance fills the air, and his heart is overwhelmed by what must be magic. His boots crunch in the sand beneath his feet and, wait-

There hadn’t been sand here before.

**_when the sky falls to earth Sumreu shatters_ **

**_buddhas take off their dirty clothes_ **

**Author's Note:**

> The poem referenced throughout is from The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, as translated by Red Pine.  
> The title is a reference to a song of the same name by Nat King Cole.
> 
> Twitter: art @portgoldfinch | personal @wyrmdisco


End file.
